South Market, Little Shoppes moving down Main Street

Published 7:52 pm Sunday, July 30, 2017

Walk along Main Street, and one may notice a couple of “moving sale” signs.

South Market Antiques and Little Shoppes are packing up and getting ready for the next chapter, but they aren’t going far. The retail duo will move into the space at 223 W. Main St., previously occupied by The Blue Crab Monograms and Gifts.

The last day at 127 W. Main St. is scheduled for Aug. 20, and then the storeowners and their friends have 10 days to complete the move, according to Rebecca Clark, co-owner of Little Shoppes. The two stores are planning to reopen Sept. 1.

“The process is just a lot of good friends helping us paint and helping us move,” Clark said, likening the experience to the Clampett family in “The Beverly Hillbillies.” “You’re going to see a lot of people hanging off of trucks.”

Clark said the new space is about 2,000 square feet smaller than its current location, but with the stores’ building contract up, they needed to make a quick move.

The Blue Crab space is already set up for retail, and any renovations will be relatively minor, she added.

“It’s going to be a miniature version. … We’re downsizing a little, but it’s going to be the same format,” Clark said. “When we started looking around for retail space, times are good in little Washington.”

All of the other available spaces would have required extensive renovations to get a store up and running, she said, thus prompting the move down the street.

It’s an exciting and a scary time for South Market Antiques and Little Shoppes, but one thing is certain: the owners wanted to stay on Main Street. It’s home to them.

“We’ve loved it here. The last thing we want to do is to move from this location,” Clark said. “We want to stay here. … Washington has been good to us.”